Danielle, there is a feeling of amplified divisiveness, but is that feeling a reality? Good morning, Carolyn. Thank you for having me on the show. The truth is, when you're online on social media on Election Day, it's like trying to drink water from a fire hydrant. There are so many feelings, so much on circuit uncertainty, so much speculation about what is going on that it's actually very hard to get a true sense, a signal in the noise on a day like today. So that's something that it's hard to tell exactly. We're trying to sift through all of the rumors that are happening to get a sense of what's going on. Danielle, we've reported on this program in recent days about how, for example, U.S. cybersecurity officials are trying to reestablish some trust with the voting base. Have you any sort of data research study that tells us how in this election,

literally today, in 2024, misinformation and voter distrust will be a factor relative to two elections in the past. Absolutely. So something that we have to understand that is unique about this election in general is that so much of the American public is primed to mistrust election results on the Republican right. So we think of it as kind of like the three C's right now. There are people out there who have convinced the American public that this election won't be safe, although it overwhelmingly by officials it is safe. They encourage folks to go out and collect evidence that there is something wrong happening on Election Day. And of course, with 130,000 different polling sites in America, there are bound to be irregularities or glitches or altercations, but these have remedies. And then finally, people will go out and try to contest the election results or processes or procedures legally or politically after this. So, yes, it is true there is increased

mistrust, particularly among or predominantly among Republicans. Democrats tend to trust elections, and we're going to see some of that play out online. In 2020, I was in Arizona. An electorate election integrity or the integrity of voting systems was the issue. Then. What is the issue now? Today, November 5th, 2024. We've seen a couple of themes emerge in during early voting and during today. Some of those were around alleged fraudulent voter registration forms. Some of them are alleged glitches in machines that are being one small problem being extrapolated into a larger conspiracy theory. So those are some issues that we've seen and that we will continue to see. But it's important to remember that these issues tend to have remedies, and that's a good thing. Talking of remedies, young looking and researching into misinformation and then trying to convert it into policy. Is there future policy that can help tackle this going forward?

It's a good question. Today, we mostly focus on gathering different types of data sets of how rumors spread on platforms that are going to inform policy change, whether that is internal to tech organizations or to government organizations or to also to all the different election officials and boards of elections around the country who want to gain the trust and keep the trust of the American public. So that's what we're focused on today, is getting that data to help those solutions later.

Parsing Election Facts From Fiction

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